Filming locations in Savoca

Savoca is a tiny hilltop village above Sicily's Ionian coast, so frozen in time that it became the Corleone homeland in The Godfather. This is where Michael Corleone is sent into exile, and where two spots a few steps apart carry his Sicilian interlude. The whole detour is small and intimate, which is exactly the point, you come not for spectacle but to stand inside a film's quietest, most fateful chapter.

Bar Vitelli is the first stop and the heart of it. This is the village bar where Michael asks a wary father for permission to court his daughter Apollonia, and it is still open, doubling as a little Godfather museum with film stills and props on its walls. Stop for a granita and a look around, the way travellers have done for decades.

A short climb up through the village brings you to the Chiesa di San Nicolo, the small hilltop church where Michael and Apollonia marry. It is free to step inside when open, but the real reward is the walk up and the terrace beyond it, which gives long views over the valley to the Ionian Sea. The climb itself is the experience.

Practically, Savoca is reached by a winding road up from the coast near Taormina, so it pairs naturally with a stay down on the water. Base yourself on the Taormina coast and drive up for a half-day. Devotees can push on to Forza d'Agro nearby, another village the saga used, and make a morning of two Godfather hamlets in the Sicilian hills.